Objective:
Dissect an owl pellet.
Details:
1) Watch How Bird Vomit Helps Us Understand History from The Brain Scoop and The Amazing Owls: Pellet Dissection from The Audubon Society.
2) (Optional) If you’re interested in a more detailed dissection tutorial, check out How to Dissect an Owl Pellet from Scott Brooks.
3) Aquire your supplies. At a minimum, you’ll need an owl pellet and an identification sheet. You can get them at Pellets.com, Amazon, or, ya know, somewhere else. There are a ton of identification sheets available online, but if you don’t want to search for your favorite this one from Nature Watch seems solid.
4) Dissect your owl pellet.
5) Sort and identify the bones you found using your identification sheet.
6) Take a photo to document your experience and post it on Instagram or Twitter with the tag #QuestScouts. Alternatively, you can also share your photo in our Facebook group.
Note: Owl pellet dissection won’t be everyone’s jam, as while interesting it’s also kinda gross. Some scouts will choose not to do this objective for that reason. Out of respect, let’s try to share photos that won’t make the more squeamish scouts queasy.
7) In the comments below, describe your experience. Where did you get your pellet? What was the process of dissection like for you? What bones did you identify? Could you tell what animal they were from?
